Question for Christian old-earth evolutionists

[Jerry Smith]

Originally posted by npetreley
...Second, my faith is a gift from G~d, not the product of science or intellect.

Perhaps for some of the theist evolutionists here, their answer to your question could be summed up in your words above. That is certainly the impression I get from them. It seems that these people are at a loss to answer your question because they see it as a question like "if you like vanilla ice cream, then why do you buy ground beef at the grocery store?"

If you will not accept the answer that their purchase of ground beef has nothing to do with the flavor of ice cream they like best, then they wonder why you brought ice cream into the question... Perhaps you should start a thread in the Christians Only forum:

"Regardless of your stance on any particular scientific matter, why do you believe God created the universe & things in it?"

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by Didaskomenos
Myth doesn't mean "myth" - it means Myth. The term has recently and unfortunately been made to be synonymous with "fairy tale," but as I've explained on countless threads, the original meaning of the term refers to a narrative meant to convey meanings (truth) beyond simple history (see C.S. Lewis's writings on the matter). Can you see that the story of Icarus falling because he flew too close to the sun on wings of wax is certainly "True" in that it has realistic metaphorical parallels to real life, although it is unhistorical and scientifically implausible? Were Jesus' parables "lies" because they were fictional?

Because God inspired Scripture, he obviously thought myth an appropriate vehicle for portraying the fact that he created the earth. If he wasn't concerned about giving us the historical details in the account, I can't imagine why anyone would be a crusader for turning the story into a history/science lesson.

So to put your position simply, aren't you saying you believe G~d created the universe because the Bible says so?

 

[Sinai]

Originally posted by excreationist
Sinai:
How do you know that the genealogy in Luke is Mary's family tree? In Luke 3:23 it says "...He was the son, so people thought, of Joseph." To me, that sentence obviously is referring to Jesus's foster-dad, Joseph because it says "He was the son, so people thought...." and most people would think that Joseph was Jesus's real father.

One of the principal problems in the verse you quoted is trying to determine what Luke meant when he wrote (in Greek) on hos enomizeto huios loseph tou Eli. The first part seems rather evident: on hos enomizeto huios loseph translates quite nicely as "being, as was supposed, son of Joseph." But what does tou Eli refer to? In other words, it could be saying either that Joseph (the proper name previously appearing) was descended from Eli, or that Jesus (the subject of the sentence) was descended from Eli. Since the geneology given in Matthew is not ambiguous when stating that Jacob is the father of Joseph, and since Luke's intent seems to be to show (a) that Jesus had no earthly father (hence he would skip directly up to Mary's father) and (b) that Jesus was the seed of the woman that should break the serpent's head, the biblical scholars with whom I have consulted and the biblical writings I have researched on this topic tend to think that Eli was the father of Mary, and that Luke is giving her geneology.

 

[Didaskomenos]

Originally posted by npetreley
So to put your position simply, aren't you saying you believe G~d created the universe because the Bible says so?

I do believe that the Bible teaches this. I wouldn't necessarily trust my interpretation of the Bible alone, however - what helps nail it for me is that it is highly improbable that, given there is a God (in whom I believe), he should just stand around and watch the formation of the universe without being in some way a participant.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by Didaskomenos
I do believe that the Bible teaches this.

Is that where you got the idea? Or is it just a coincidence?

Originally posted by Didaskomenos
I wouldn't necessarily trust my interpretation of the Bible alone, however - what helps nail it for me is that it is highly improbable that, given there is a God (in whom I believe), he should just stand around and watch the formation of the universe without being in some way a participant.

You believe you know enough about G~d to trust your conclusion about what He would or would not do, but you don't know enough to trust what you think the Bible says. Where did you get this intimate knowledge of G~d if you can't trust what you think the Bible says?

 

[David Gould]

Originally posted by npetreley
I still don't see the answer here. You felt a connection with Jesus - but did you think He was telling you He created all things? Or did you read it somewhere? Or did you find out by ESP?

I read it, of course. But I also read that Allah had created the world. I felt no connection with Allah, though.

If you are asking: did I trust my connection with Jesus and his writings over observed facts then the answer is that I did not find any contradictions.

The contradictions that wrecked my faith were contained in the Bible itself and not between observed facts and the Bible.

So I guess I never made the choice between facts and the Bible in the sense you mean. I chose what I saw to be logical over the Bible, though.

 

 

[David Gould]

Originally posted by npetreley
Is that where you got the idea? Or is it just a coincidence?



You believe you know enough about G~d to trust your conclusion about what He would or would not do, but you don't know enough to trust what you think the Bible says. Where did you get this intimate knowledge of G~d if you can't trust what you think the Bible says?

I got my general knowledge of God from the connection that I got with Jesus.

Some of the things described in the Bible did not fit this feeling. I thus trusted my connection with Jesus over and above what it said in the Bible.

The charachter described in the Bible best fit the feeling I had, although not completely. 

Specific details, such as "God created the universe" seemed obvious, as that is the definition I had in my mind of God. This definition came from my culture, which no doubt got it from the Bible. 

As to the specific details, the Bible was written by a primitive people struggling to understand the infinite.

We have more knowledge of the way the world works than them and thus a different context. What is the problem with that?

 

[excreationist]

Originally posted by Didaskomenos
More accurately? What's inaccurate about it? Just because he spoke to these people in their own language doesn't mean he was being dishonest. Because we have evolved past a certain point in history and have changed our epistemology, we often tend to think that now God doesn't have to use this "baby talk" to communicate with us - but that's arrogant nonsense. In our present age we may like "science" and "history" as we know it, but it doesn't eliminate the inevitable gap between God's mind and that of man.

I don't see why ancient people couldn't understand concepts like the universe being very, very old and the earth forming more recently out of the sun, and people being descended from animals, etc. Children can understand that if they are taught that. Maybe you think that science lesson is too boring... well what about those genealogies? They are far more boring.

Besides, there is no distortion of truth in mythology. Every myth of every country in history is "true."

So if the myths of a tribe say that a particular spirit created a particular mountain that myth is "true"? Is there really "no distortion of truth" in mythology? If they are true that implies that the spirits who created the mountain that is mentioned in the myth exists....

The Hebrew myth God chose to spread his truth to mankind. Why should we think it insufficient?

Why are the genealogies in there? What purpose to they serve? I guess you don't know. Why did God bore his readers like that? Perhaps to fool many into thinking this was actually a historical document rather than a myth...

I believe in the virgin birth. I believe that Jesus exorcised demons, and that Jesus ascended to heaven. The NT is a fairly trustworthy view of history.

But what about the genealogies in Matthew and Luke? BTW, do you think people are still possessed by demons today? I think it's strange that you are quite certain those miracles in the gospels happened but are much more skeptical about the OT.

...The NT writers were much more interested in presenting history as we know it and considered deception sinful, so I would trust at very least that they were not lying when reporting things...

I guess this means that the genealogies in Matthew and Luke are correct then... I thought there was a commandment against bearing false witness...

...What knowledge they had that was based on the ancient writings of their people is irrelevant to their trustworthiness in presenting the history that they witnessed (e.g., the miracles of Jesus, the history of the Church in Acts written by a Greek, not a Semite, etc.)...

Ok.... so the genealogies could be wrong because their ancestors confused or deceived them.

...Exodus? Most of the above were probably based on remembrances that have for the most part a basis in history but which were augmented into a much more saga-type form, as were the patriarchy and monarchy narratives....

Why do you think people "augmented" some memories of past history? Was Jesus aware of this? If so, why didn't he tell those who would tell his genealogies, etc, to the gospel writers about it? Do you have any evidence that writers in the OT liked to "augment" history sometimes? Why didn't God get upset and complain to his prophets about it? I guess he isn't very concerned about the quality of his holy books. In Revelation he gets concerned about those who add or subtract things from his word though...

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by David Gould
I chose what I saw to be logical over the Bible, though.

So you trust your abilities of interpretation over the abilities of the author, then?

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by npetreley
Does scientific evidence contradict anything you believe in? Which takes precedence, a scientific statement or your faith?

Science and Theology do not contradict each other is my stance.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by excreationist
Why do you think people "augmented" some memories of past history? Was Jesus aware of this? If so, why didn't he tell those who would tell his genealogies, etc, to the gospel writers about it?

You seem obsessed with the geneology thing. Are you not familiar with the common practice of telescoping geneologies for various purposes?

 

[excreationist]

You seem obsessed with the geneology thing. Are you not familiar with the common practice of telescoping geneologies for various purposes?

I thought "telescoping" means condensing - on the other hand, you quoting me talking about augmentation - which means adding in extra (fictional) details. So what do you mean by "telescoping"?
Anyway, I think the genealogies are fairly interesting... big deal.

 

[David Gould]

Originally posted by npetreley
So you trust your abilities of interpretation over the abilities of the author, then?

In that particular case, yes.

However, I was convinced by the argument of Thomas Paine in "Age of Reason". So I judged that Paine was more reliable than whoever wrote Genesis and so on.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by excreationist
I thought "telescoping" means condensing - on the other hand, you quoting me talking about augmentation - which means adding in extra (fictional) details. So what do you mean by "telescoping"?
Anyway, I think the genealogies are fairly interesting... big deal.

I'm not sure I follow your complaint about geneologies in the Bible.

I just moved and all my books are in boxes, so I can't look this up. But from my understanding, telescoping of geneologies means collapsing the geneologies more or less, depending on the author's purpose.

That's one reason why the geneologies of Matthew and Luke differ. As I recall, Matthew skipped certain relationships so that he could present the geneology in groups of some number (I forget what the grouping number was).

Another -- much more important -- reason for the difference between Matthew and Luke's geneology is that Matthew was tracing the geneology for Joseph, but Luke was tracing it to Mary.

The point was to establish the fact that Jesus had both a legal (Joseph) and biological (Mary) lineage from David, which is where the two geneologies split off into two differents sets.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by David Gould
However, I was convinced by the argument of Thomas Paine in "Age of Reason". So I judged that Paine was more reliable than whoever wrote Genesis and so on.

Ah. So you think Thomas Paine -- who was removed from the actual events by more than 1700 years -- has a more reliable opinion of the events in the New Testament than the NT writers themselves, or those who voiced their views within 50-100 years of those events? Fascinating.

 

[David Gould]

Originally posted by npetreley
Ah. So you think Thomas Paine -- who was removed from the actual events by more than 1700 years -- has a more reliable opinion of the events in the New Testament than the NT writers themselves, or those who voiced their views within 50-100 years of those events? Fascinating.

Not exactly. Thomas Paine was removed from the events he was analysing by even longer - he wasn't looking at the new testament but at the Pentuarch.

Paine's explanation of the events described seemed to me to be more reasonable than the explanation of Christian apologists.

It was quite clear after reading him that I had been at the very least inadvertantly misled - for example, the claim that Moses wrote the Pentuarch was clearly bogus. As this claim was made by the founders of Judaism and Christianity, their credibility immidiately went out the window.

And thus my faith vanished. I had believed these people and they had quite clearly been completely wrong or, worse, had deliberately decieved.

In that sense, I trusted my analysis of Paine's logic over what they said.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by David Gould
Not exactly. Thomas Paine was removed from the events he was analysing by even longer - he wasn't looking at the new testament but at the Pentuarch.

From the age of reason:

Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage, or anything else. Not a line of what is called the New Testament is of his writing. The history of him is altogether the work of other people; and as to the account given of his resurrection and ascension, it was the necessary counterpart to the story of his birth. His historians, having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground.

That's not the pentateuch.

Originally posted by David Gould
Paine's explanation of the events described seemed to me to be more reasonable than the explanation of Christian apologists.

So it's reasonable to come to the above conclusions 1700 years after the events, even though eyewitness accounts contradict these conclusions? If that's reasonable to you, well, then we aren't going to get very far in what I would consider a "reasonable" debate.

Originally posted by David Gould
It was quite clear after reading him that I had been at the very least inadvertantly misled - for example, the claim that Moses wrote the Pentuarch was clearly bogus.

Again, you take the word of Thomas Paine over the remarkable history of the OT -- including the way it was handed down and preserved almost perfectly over thousands of years by people who knew it was written by Moses? Okay, fine.

Originally posted by David Gould
As this claim was made by the founders of Judaism and Christianity, their credibility immidiately went out the window.

And thus my faith vanished. I had believed these people and they had quite clearly been completely wrong or, worse, had deliberately decieved.

In that sense, I trusted my analysis of Paine's logic over what they said.

Okie doke.

 

[David Gould]

Originally posted by npetreley
From the age of reason:



That's not the pentateuch.



So it's reasonable to come to the above conclusions 1700 years after the events, even though eyewitness accounts contradict these conclusions? If that's reasonable to you, well, then we aren't going to get very far in what I would consider a "reasonable" debate.



Again, you take the word of Thomas Paine over the remarkable history of the OT -- including the way it was handed down and preserved almost perfectly over thousands of years by people who knew it was written by Moses? Okay, fine.



Okie doke.

You are right - he did analyse the New Testament. I forgot that part. However, it was the analysis of the Pentuarch that resulted in me losing my faith - that is why I remember it.

With regard to my reasonableness, it is quite clear that Moses could not have written the books. Thomas Paine shows this by going carefully through the books themselves.

I am not taking Paine's word for anything - I went through his analysis carefully myself, read the Old Testament, asked some questions of priests. I did not know who Paine was so had no reason to trust him on anything. I trusted the logic he used, not him.

How do you know that the Old Testament was preserved almost perfectly? Do you have the original version? The oldest complete versions in existence are from only about 300 BC. Supposedly, it was written hundreds of years earlier than that. Do you have the unbroken line for us to look at to determine this closeness to perfection? It seems to me that you assume it is nearly perfect. You have no evidence that it is.

I trust logic. It seems to work. When I was shown a logical proof that Moses could not have written the Old Testament, I looked for a refutation of that logical proof. I have found none that have satisfied me as yet.

I should add that my atheism no longer rests on this point, though. I have discovered that their are Christians who do not make the claim that Moses wrote the Pentuarch and who say that is was claimed to be as a validation method - a standard thing in Jewish writing and of writings in other cultures. However, just because the validation method is not true, that does not mean that the Bible is false.

I am an atheist because I see no evidence for a God.

 

[Jedi]

I am an atheist because I see no evidence for a God.

Tell me, how are you able to reason? You see, if there is no God, then our only option to explain how we are here is random evolutionary processes. If our solar system came about my accidental collision (chance), then the appearance of earth is also an accident. If this is true, then the appearance of organic life on earth was an accident. If so, then the entire evolution of man was an accident as well. If this is true, then all of man's thought processes (i.e. of atheism and evolution) are mere accidents - the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. If this is so, why should I believe your thoughts and conclusions to be true? I see no reason to believe that one accident can take a correct account of all the other accidents. Why should I believe your reflexes to random, outside variables (your thoughts) to be true? You're speaking nothing but mere random gibberish. It seems you are obligated to believe in the supernatural (of which you are a part), or else you are forced to commit intellectual suicide.

Also, humanity has shown a great capacity to design. Humans have designed and constructed things such as the Golden Gate Bridge, super computers, automobiles, jets, submarines, the Internet, and entire cities. However, what is not created by design cannot, itself, design. You cannot give what you do not have. And so since man can design, it would follow that he was designed, and what is designed needs a designer – God. To say that man cannot design would bring us back to our previous point, which is ultimately self-defeating.

 

[David Gould]

Originally posted by Jedi
Tell me, how are you able to reason? You see, if there is no God, then our only option to explain how we are here is random evolutionary processes. If our solar system came about my accidental collision (chance), then the appearance of earth is also an accident. If this is true, then the appearance of organic life on earth was an accident. If so, then the entire evolution of man was an accident as well. If this is true, then all of man's thought processes (i.e. of atheism and evolution) are mere accidents - the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. If this is so, why should I believe your thoughts and conclusions to be true? I see no reason to believe that one accident can take a correct account of all the other accidents. Why should I believe your reflexes to random, outside variables (your thoughts) to be true? You're speaking nothing but mere random gibberish. It seems you are obligated to believe in the supernatural (of which you are a part), or else you are forced to commit intellectual suicide.

Also, humanity has shown a great capacity to design. Humans have designed and constructed things such as the Golden Gate Bridge, super computers, automobiles, jets, submarines, the Internet, and entire cities. However, what is not created by design cannot, itself, design. You cannot give what you do not have. And so since man can design, it would follow that he was designed, and what is designed needs a designer – God. To say that man cannot design would bring us back to our previous point, which is ultimately self-defeating.

With regard to the first part, you see no reason to believe that an accident can take a correct account of all the other accidents.

First of all, no-one claims to have a correct account of all the other accidents. We are gradually learning more and more, but the chances are there will always be something more to learn.

Second of all, is your mind the limit now? Just because you can't see how something can be, that means it can't?

Sorry - I do not subscribe to argumentum ad ignorantum. I see reason to believe that it could happen.

You secondly assert that what is not designed cannot itself design.

Prove it - and remember, you cannot prove something by assuming it. If humans were not designed then things that are designed can design, proving your assertion wrong.

You state that things cannot give what they do not have. I am not sure what you mean by this but it seems to be the old "complex thing cannot emerge from simple things". One word: fractals. Two words: Ant world.

Ant world is a computer simulated world with simple rules.

First of all, it is an infinite grid of white squares.

An ant starts in one of the squares and moves forward one square to start. The rules are: if it enters a white square the square turns black and the ant turns left. If it enters a black square, the square turns white and the ant turns right.

Extremely simple rules and an extremely simple world.

So the ants behaviour must be simple, right?

Wrong. The ants behaviour is incredibly complex and completely unpredictable. The only way to know where the ant is going to be after any number of steps is to run through those steps.

What is being witnessed in ant world is emergent behaviour - complex behaviour that emerges out of extremely simple rules.

 

In addition, there is a major, major flaw in your argument. Was God designed? If not, how does he design? If so, who designed the designer?

The only way you can get round this is by saying: "Everything that designs must have been designed except God."

That is an ad hoc rationalisation.

I could just as easily state: "Everything that deisgns must have been designed except for the things that weren't."

It makes the whole argument a joke.